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Racial Innocence: Law, Social Science, and the Unknowing of Racism in the US Carceral State

Author(s): Murakawa, Naomi

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Abstract: Racial innocence is the practice of securing blamelessness for the death-dealing realities of racial capitalism. This article reviews the legal, social scientific, and reformist mechanisms that maintain the racial innocence of one particular site: the US carceral state. With its routine dehumanization, violence, and stunning levels of racial disparity, the carceral state should be a hard test case for the willful unknowing of obvious devastation. Nonetheless, the law presumes "no racism," condones racial profiling, and interprets racial disparity in policing and imprisonment as evidence of true racial difference in criminality, not discrimination. Prominent social science research too often mimics these practices, producing research that aids in the collective erasure of racism. © 2019 Annual Reviews Inc.
Publication Date: 13-Oct-2019
Citation: Murakawa, N. (2019). Racial Innocence: Law, Social Science, and the Unknowing of Racism in the US Carceral State. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 15 (473 - 493). doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101518-042649
DOI: doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-101518-042649
ISSN: 1550-3585
Pages: 473 - 493
Type of Material: Journal Article
Journal/Proceeding Title: Annual Review of Law and Social Science
Version: Author's manuscript



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